High in the Berkeley Hills, a forgotten Bay Area masterpiece of midcentury modern architecture sits waiting in legal limbo until it can receive more recognition and be appreciated by its new owners, UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design.

The Weston Havens House, with its innovative architecture designed around stunning views of the Bay Area, was built by architect Harwell Hamilton Harris in 1941 and given to the college when its owner died, three years ago.

"This is one of the most important examples of American modernism," says Harrison Fraker, the college's dean. "In its 1957 centennial assessment of American architecture, the AIA compared the Weston Havens House to Richard Neutra's Lovell House for its innovative section and to Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright for its dramatic response to site. Indeed, the Weston Havens House is one of the most stunning examples of our modern architectural heritage."

Today it sits in the hills above the campus, nestled in the trees and all but hidden from view, faded into the landscape much in the way its reputation faded into architectural history.

The Weston Havens House has deep roots in Berkeley history through its owner, John Weston Havens Jr., who died on Oct. 7, 2001, at 97. He was the last in the line of one of Berkeley's founders, Francis Kittredge Shattuck, and he spent his life as a quiet patron of the arts, and managing what remained of his family's properties. From an early age Weston Havens was interested in modern architecture and design, and in 1938, he traveled to Europe to see modernism's achievements. There he met both Swiss architect Le Corbusier and Finland's Alvar Aalto. Shortly after this inspirational journey he bought a piece of property high in the Berkeley hills, with expansive views, on which to build a house, and he sought an architect whose modernist point of view would be distinctly Californian. He found that architect in Harwell Hamilton Harris.

Like Weston Havens, Harris was a descendent of California's pioneer stock, though from Southern California. Harris and Weston Havens had much in common. Their values were formed by the individualism and pragmatism that characterized early Anglo-American California. For them, California still seemed a place apart, an emerging cultural arcadia with progressive values distinct from those of the East Coast and Europe.

Harris believed that modern architecture in California should be a contemporary but indigenous expression, rooted in the practices of Bernard Maybeck, Ernest Coxhead and the Greene brothers, architects of the Arts and Crafts movement. Harris' and Weston Havens' shared values converged to produce an original work of architecture.

The impression the Weston Havens House makes is experiential -- a deft choreography of architectural space. A 7-foot-high redwood fence covered with Boston ivy and recessed garage doors present an understated facade to the street. The entrance, where the plane of the fence folds to meet the garage, is easily missed, and it opens up to a path perpendicular to the street that becomes a bridge leading toward the house. The bridge's inclined sides block the view below and reveal only the sky above, leaving the visitor somewhat disoriented. The path continues directly through the front door and foyer under a very low horizontal ceiling, to confront a freestanding cabinet wall. To the sides and connected by a spiral stair to the floor below lie the more intimate spaces of the kitchen and bedrooms, as well as the sunken court. But directly ahead, as one turns to circumvent the cabinetry, the ceiling lifts, inclining upward, and a dramatic panoramic view opens up through 10-foot-high floor-to-ceiling windows, encompassing Berkeley below, the San Francisco Bay and the city of San Francisco silhouetted in the distance beyond, Mount Tamalpais to the right and, directly on axis, the Golden Gate Bridge. This is the destination of a masterful architectural promenade.

Driven by section

Harris' formal moves that yield this rich spatial experience are both clever and highly original, and they are understood when viewed in architectural section. The house consists essentially of two volumes, separated by the court and linked by the bridge. One volume, with the servant's apartment and the garage, is anchored to the upper part of the slope along the street. The other volume thrusts out from the slope and into the view. This second volume is constructed of three stacked, inverted triangular trusses. These floors open outward toward the view, which is made all the more dramatic as the ceiling tilts upward to reveal even more. The trusses reveal themselves fully only at the two side elevations, where they are clad in wide redwood boards, but these are barely visible through the foliage, a true architectural "now you see it, now you don't" sleight of hand.

The design of this house was a direct inspiration of the site. In Harris' own words, "the house does not frame the view; it projects the beholder into it. The view is no mere segment of something seen through a hole. Instead it is an extension of the sky, the water and the hills, below and behind one."

The plan supports the sectional idea and is rigorously laid out on a 3- foot grid, a technique often favored by Frank Lloyd Wright as well as Richard Neutra and R.M. Schindler. The grid zones the house into functional layers, and organizes the details. The house can be read as a set of contrasts at different scales: the compressed 12-foot zone of entry, kitchen, baths and bedrooms, against the expansive 15-foot zone of living and dining rooms; the quiet of the private rooms, the drama of the living and dining area, the intimate shady court and the brilliant infinite landscape. The subtle ordering of the grid and the layering provide an effortless rigor that organizes the house and also establishes its organic relationship with the landscape.

Weston Havens had asked Harris to provide walls that were primarily either view or books. These walls of books contribute to a comfortable tactility that characterizes the house as a whole. Harris' affinity for the California Arts and Crafts legacy provides material and tactile richness. Unfinished redwood is the primary sheathing material of the house, rough sawn on the exterior and milled on the interior, in impressive widths that would be difficult to replicate today. Oak floors and the spiral staircase sheathed in a blond Finnish birch complement the dominant redwood palette. A mural on large, floor-to-ceiling double doors between the dining and kitchen areas is a map of the world, painted, wisely, as World War II was looming, with no borders.

The unglazed portion of the sloped ceiling is sheathed with gray cementitious panels flecked with white and pink, and attached with brass nails impeccably paired along the revealed joints. Exterior flashing, trim and gutters are all copper. In an unusual move that anticipated the much later work of Frank Gehry, Harris used chain link to enclose the exterior balconies.

Another material innovation was the use of fiberboard panels as shoji- like closet doors. Cabinetry typically is without hardware, providing only chamfered edges so the doors can be pulled open. The custom built-in seating in the living room is upholstered in plush, velvet-napped wool with a rich blue hue selected by Harris, who took great delight in color as well as texture.

Weston Havens' furnishings, by Alvar Aalto, Bernhard Mathesson and other Scandinavian designers, many of which were purchased during his 1938 trip, favor wood and natural fibers. Together with the bamboo-stick blinds that unroll in the afternoon as the western sun lays siege to the interior and view, these materials make for a warm and tactile material presence, revealing a Californian modernity with a particular affinity to the San Francisco Bay Area.

In legal limbo

"The Weston Havens House is Harwell Hamilton Harris' most important home, and that it resides in the San Francisco Bay Area is something we should be celebrating and elevating. It should not remain hidden and unrecognized," says Joseph Rosa, Helen Hilton Curator of Architecture and Design at SFMOMA. But since Weston Havens' death in 2001, the house has sat in a kind of legal limbo, and title has yet to transfer to the College of Environmental Design as lawyers for the estate and lawyers for the university continue to resolve legal issues stemming from insurance claims for damage caused by a storm in 2002. When the house is made available to the college, Fraker intends it to be used for visiting faculty, small receptions and limited tours.

"University of California at Berkeley has a long tradition of care and stewardship for important works of architecture," notes Fraker. "The CED is committed to doing whatever is necessary to preserve this priceless gem and integrate its use into the life of the college."

John Weston Havens Jr.

Weston Havens (1903-2001) was the great-nephew of Francis Kittredge Shattuck, one of the founders of the East Bay. He led a quiet life, managing the remaining legacy of his family's properties and engaging in philanthropy. His friendship with Harwell Hamilton Harris lasted throughout their lives.

Harwell Hamilton Harris

Harris (1903-1990) first learned architectural design when he was apprenticed to Richard Neutra and R.M. Schindler in their Los Angeles studio. Harris' career began in Southern California, where he built a distinguished legacy of homes. In 1951 he became the architecture school dean at the University of Texas at Austin, where he presided over curricular reforms that had influence across the country. He spent the rest of his life as a professor at the University of North Carolina.